Lazy Gardner Project - An Intro
I’ve been wanting to get back into the Arduino scene for some time. But, until now, it’s always been a battle between lack of time or just pure laziness. I decided enough was enough and decided on a project that would be both fun and useful - introducing the Lazy Gardener! You’ve probably seen many of these projects on the net. An arduino powered plant irrigation system. I decided to build my own but without any help from other guides. I’ve been procuring lots of stuff from my new favorite site aliexpress.com. But I also had a bunch of existing stuff laying around, such as my Arduino Pro Mini’s (5v). The first utility tool I have built is a simple soil moisture level tester. To build it, I used:
- 1x Arduino Pro Mini 5v
- 1x SSD1306 0.96" OLED Display (I used the 6-pin, careful as there are many different types with different numbers of pins)
- 1x YL-69 Soil Moisture sensor (this link is to a pack of 20 but you can easily find single lots)
- Various cables, headers, jumpers and a 4 AA batter module (since we need at least 5v)
I’ll draw out a schematic soon but here are some pictures. It isn’t pretty but it’s functional. I’ve been reading the soil moisture sensor has accuracy issues, but at this time I’m ok with that since I don’t need a 100% accurate reading, I just need ballparks since I’ll use this reading to determine whether or not to pump water into the plant periodically.
The sensor in action. You can see my soil is quite hydrated. I’m growing baby tomatoes here.
The Code
https://gist.github.com/cdrum/b23c64cedc66666105b08e2dfd966bce